


Wolf Bite

by LightInside



Series: Demons [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Action & Romance, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Look forward to it, One instance of smut, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wedding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 16:39:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7540069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightInside/pseuds/LightInside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Months after Korra and Asami's close call in the Fire Nation, the couple is eagerly planning their wedding. But amidst and around the happy occasion, Korra's nightmares and encounters with the dark version of herself from the day she was poisoned continue to escalate. With the help of their friends, they'll have to hunt down the truth behind this new enemy in order to face it, and Korra has other inner demons to face as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf Bite

**Author's Note:**

> Happy anniversary, everyone! One year ago today, I posted the final chapter of Petals of Flame. It took me a long time because of perfectionism and real life junk, but FINALLY, here is the sequel. As the anniversary drew closer and closer, I knew I couldn't let this story go for over a year without an update, so I decided to post this on the day as a little celebration. For any and all of you that are still here with me despite my extreme absence, and for everyone who is still interested in reading my work after hanging on a cliff for a year, thank you so much. I still mostly write for myself, trying to tell stories that I enjoy, but having you all to enjoy it with is an amazing thing for me.
> 
> Keep being awesome, and I look forward to seeing you all around and hearing what you think about this new installment.

“Are you almost done?” Korra whined from the other room. I could hear her bouncing her leg impatiently. “Our reservation is in 15 minutes!”

“Almost!” I called back, carefully drawing a smooth curve for the wing of my eyeliner, just right to match the first eye. I had missed being able to do that, at least do it well. It was strange, the things I started to appreciate while my dominant hand was in a cast. Having it off felt incredible. “And I can get us there in five, don't worry. Besides, they won't give away our spot. Not with  _ our  _ names on the list.”

“Yeah, but I hate leaning on being the Avatar for that kind of stuff.”

I capped my eyeliner, returned it to my makeup kit, and stowed that in the drawer between the two sinks. “Then you can lean on being the fiancée of the CEO of Future Industries,” I teased, making my way out of the restroom and putting a hand on my hip. Korra was lounging on the bed, feet flat on the floor as she leaned back to rest on her elbows. Her dress was simple, blue with a halter neck and a straight cut that hung loose from her hips, but as always, she looked stunning in it. She was staring in the opposite direction, pointedly at the door.

“I don't like doing that either,” she pouted, then turned and caught sight of me. She immediately sat up and broke into a smile, that crooked grin that kicked my heart rate up a few notches. “You look amazing.”

I smiled softly as I dropped my gaze to the figure hugging crimson gown I'd picked for tonight, quarter-sleeves and a fitted bodice above an asymmetrical skirt. The restaurant I’d chosen was rather high end, and we were celebrating my cast coming off on top of the fact that we’d finally set a date for the wedding this December, so it was a good night to dress up. I couldn't see it past my chin, but I reached up to run my fingers over the pendant of my necklace. “Thank you. You're looking quite beautiful yourself, you know.” I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my left ear, only for it to fall forward again. Her grin widened.

Her eyes lit up a little more and she reached out to take my hand, her silver ring glittering on her finger, adorned with rubies and sapphires in a design that mimicked my pendant. “Come on, we’re gonna be late!” I let her pull me along, out of the bedroom and through the halls of   
the estate, down the stairs and to the garage. She hopped in the passenger's side, I took the wheel, and with a rev of the engine we took off into town, course set for the heart of Republic City just a few blocks this side of the portal.

“So tell me about this place again,” she asked once we were on the road. “Some kind of Fire Nation food, right?”

“That's right,” I smiled. “It's a traditional Fire Nation steakhouse, authentic to a fault. Well, almost to a fault. Firebending isn't a strict requirement to be a chef there any more, even if it is an advantage. It's one of the nicest restaurants in the city, and the experience is almost as incredible as the food. You're going to love it.” I turned to look at her at my last statement, only to find her already focused on me.

“Sounds great!” She flashed that smile again and I felt my heart flutter. I quickly returned my attention to the road.

As promised, we arrived moments later, just in time for our reservation. We were quickly seated along with three other couples around three sides of a large table. The fourth side and much of the center area of the table was dedicated to a large sheet of metal. I turned to tell Korra about it, but just as I did, she sat up straighter, using her bending to examine the metal, so I kept quiet until she finished, just enjoying her problem solving look.

After a moment of feeling the metal, her face lit up in realization. “It’s a grill!” And then that caught up with her, and she turned to me. “A grill? Are they gonna cook it right here?”

I nodded, smiling. “That way, you know you’re getting exactly what you want, and it lets the chefs have fun with the patrons.”

“Sounds like a cool job.”

“They seem to have pretty low turnover, and they look like they enjoy it.” I scanned the rest of the dining area where chefs at other tables were at various stages of show for their diners, then glanced around at the other couples seated around the table with us, each having their own quiet conversation. “I’ve heard it’s more enjoyable with some kids at the table because the chefs know how to make it fun for them, and it’s fun to watch. Hopefully everyone here knows how to have a good time.”

“Just heard? So you haven’t been here with kids at your table, huh? You must come here mostly on business meetings and stuff, a bunch of older guys just looking for some nice food while they talk about contracts.”

I felt a twinge in my chest that I had been hoping to avoid tonight, and my smile faded. “Actually, I’ve never been here for a business lunch. I think I probably would have rescheduled if someone suggested it. In fact, it’s been years since I’ve come.”

Korra’s expression fell too, a mixture of curiosity and concern. “How come? You were so excited about bringing me here, I thought it was one of your favorites.”

“It is. But I haven’t been back since I was twelve. Dad stopped bringing me after a while. We used to come once a year, and before that it was every holiday, every birthday. Any special occasion he could find, any excuse he could make. It was my mother’s favorite.” Her anniversary was coming up. Dad’s had already passed for the year.

Korra reached over and put a hand on my shoulder, leaning forward to meet my eye. I let out a heavy breath, then blinked back the moisture that had made it to my eyes and tried to put on a smile. “I thought it was time to start celebrating their memories instead of just grieving. And I would love to make new memories of this place with you.”

That brought back the grin I love. “You got it! We’re gonna have a great time! And I’m seriously looking forward to this food if it’s half as good as you talked it up.”

As always, her energy was infectious. "If it's anything like I remember, you’ll be asking to come back." Our chef arrived moments later and began setting up with the same light-hearted conversation and friendly banter from when I was young, but with my mother's memory already resurfaced, I could feel the weight lingering in my chest. I tried to focus on Korra and her excitement as she joked along with and played off of the chef wonderfully, exchanging quips and humoring him, but my mind kept drifting back. She must have noticed, of course she did, because she started asking me questions about the dishes, about my latest projects at work, anything to get me talking. I was grateful for the distraction.

But when the cooking actually started, it drew Korra's attention and the distraction she had provided was gone. The performance drew my attention too, but not as well as she had been, especially since it brought back its own memories. Half of what he did was for show before frying a variety of vegetables for the table, and I picked at them as Korra dug in. She noticed and reached over to squeeze my knee, giving me a sympathetic smile that I tried to return. I turned back to the grill just as the chef snapped his fingers over a small tower of onion rings.

_ A plume of fire exploded before my eyes, filling my vision. My mother's pained screams echoed into my hiding place, drowning out everything else except the crackling of the flames engulfing her. I wanted to turn away, wanted to cover my eyes, wanted to scream and cry out as I watched her burning to death, but I couldn't do anything except sit and watch, frozen. I heard my father cry out for me, but I was too terrified to respond. Tears finally began to fall down my cheeks and I started shaking. "Asami!" His voice was getting louder, clearer. The flames flared in front of me again and her final cry trailed off into the darkness left behind. "Asami!" I covered my mouth with a hand, gasped, felt my own scream coming and tried to suppress it for my own safety, to keep myself hidden. _

"Asami!" It was Korra's voice, Korra's hand grabbing my wrist while her other gripped my shoulder, staring into my watery eyes as I pulled in a ragged breath. I felt tears slip over my jaw and down my neck as I looked around the table to see everyone looking at me, the expressions a mixture of concerned and confused. Hers was both worried and relieved. "Are you okay?"

I tried to speak, but my voice broke on my first attempt. I took a deep breath, swallowed once, and took her hand in mine. "Yeah. I'm okay. I just... I need some air." I scooted my chair back and rose from my seat. I glanced at the others at our table again. "Excuse me." I gave her hand a squeeze for reassurance, then made my way outside and leaned against the wall next to the entrance. I pulled a cloth from my clutch and dabbed at the tear trails quickly drying on my cheeks.

Scarcely a minute passed before the door opened again and Korra poked her head out, then exited and let it swing shut. "Hey... thought you might want some company. But if you'd rather be alone, I can go back inside."

"No. Stay, please." She leaned against the wall beside me and took my hand in hers again.

We stayed there in silence for a moment as I took slow deep breaths before she spoke again. "It was your mom, right?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I almost told her no, that I was fine. It was a lie I told myself often enough that it was easy to tell it to others, and pretending I was okay had gotten me through some tough times without cracking. But then I turned and met her eyes and it really hit me that this was  _ Korra  _ I was talking to. So I stopped and thought about it.  _ If I’m going to talk to anyone about this kind of thing, it’s Korra. But do I even want to talk about it? Is there anything to talk about? _

“I… I’m not sure if there’s really anything to talk about. I’ve already told you what happened with her… I just watched it happen again, I don’t want to think about it in detail right now. Being here just brought it to the surface, and the fire caught me off guard.”

She frowned and leaned her head back against the wall, looking up at the sky. “I know what you mean. That kind of happened to me back on that island. When I saw  _ her _ there, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I was suddenly right back when I first saw her. Just like when I used to have flashbacks of Zaheer. It’s awful… Do you want to go home?”

One more deep breath and a quick check on my heart rate. “No, I’m okay. I want to finish dinner. You’re missing all the fun.”

She put on an unassuming smile. “What do you mean? You’re out here.”

I grinned back at that. “Ooh, smooth tonight. Let’s go eat. Maybe we can still catch the butterfly-shrimp catching game.”

“You didn’t tell me about that! Let’s go!” She pulled me by the hand back inside, and I found myself enjoying the rest of the evening, free of haunting memories despite an edge of grief.

\----

Asami seemed in better spirits the rest of the night, even taking me out for ice cream after dinner. Sitting on the curb with it in our dresses reminded me of how that whole mess in the Fire Nation started just a few months ago. There was no bad  news this time though, just the two of us out on a date. Incredible dinner, my favorite dessert, and then skipping the mover we had planned to just go home and cuddle on the couch instead. Once we were both in our pajamas, I sat on the bed and meditated, and she laid with her head in my lap and read a book, her hair splayed across my legs. It was the best date night we’d had that year.

We turned in relatively early, both the happy kind of tired and she had an early business meeting the next day. She fell asleep on my shoulder, and about twenty minutes later the sound of her breathing and the smell of her hair had me drift off too.

…… 

I woke with a start around one in the morning, hair sticking to my face thanks to cold sweat. Asami was still sleeping peacefully next to me, though we’d gone from cuddling to spooning during the night. I let out a sigh. Usually I talked in my sleep when I had a nightmare, which would wake her up and then she’d wake me up to jolt me out of it. When I did manage to pull out of bad dreams without disturbing her, I tried to let her sleep. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it that night anyway.

I edged slowly out of bed and ducked out into the hall. The huge house still felt more like  _ her _ home than mine, but it was getting there. The hallway was dark, so I felt my way towards the stairway in the foyer. The downstairs kitchen was my target, though I wasn’t in any hurry and my thoughts kept drifting back to the dream.

Nightmares had plagued me for years, ever since Zaheer. Most of the time they were flashbacks to that day, or to Vaatu, or even Amon. Sometimes they were abstract, that  _ thing _ that looked like me from the day I was poisoned chasing me, fighting me, sometimes killing me. This one was different than those.

I wasn’t even sure I could call it a nightmare except for the end, but it still scared me and left me with a terrible feeling in my stomach. I fought to remember the details so that I could talk to Tenzin or Kya about it later. They always had good insight about what might be causing the dreams and what I could do to make them happen less, even if I never managed to stop them entirely. There weren’t that many details though, everything came in flashes. Tons of green and brown, roots and vines and water and mud. More water, a lake in the middle of a forest. A wolf twice the size of a truck, its tail flicking through the leaves and disappearing behind a tree trunk as I gave chase. Aang, but glowing blue, just his spirit. A flash of light and a rush of spirit energy, a thousand insect-like legs clicking and clacking, hundreds of eyes staring at me.

Up until then, the dream had been disorienting but not really bad. Then she was there, the anti-me, with her glowing eyes and platinum chain. I could feel dark energy radiating off of her, and slowly her features faded to black until all that was left was her shape, and then even that twisted and spread until I was face to face with Vaatu. That sinister laugh echoed in my bones and I lunged forward to hit him with fire, but before the blast from my fist could reach him, he vanished and the flames shot past him toward what I hadn’t seen beyond him: Asami. 

Panicked, I reached out and diverted the flames away from her only to be struck in the shoulder by a blast of water. I stumbled backwards, stunned as she pulled up another tendril of water from nowhere before thrusting it at me again. Her eyes were glowing red as I met her gaze mid-dodge. Once I was clear, I lunged forward with an earth strike. Her eyes returned to normal, a look of horror in them just before the spike of earth --

And that’s when I’d woken up. I found myself breathing hard again just thinking about it.

Somehow, I managed to find my way to the kitchen while I was lost in thought. I pulled open the fridge and dug around inside for a midnight snack and a glass of lychee juice, my standard for after a nightmare. I twisted my ring on my finger as I considered my options, nothing really striking me, until I eventually settled on the leftovers from dinner. As I stood back up and shut the door, two glowing white eyes stared at me from across the room.

With a startled yell and a jerk of my arm, I sent a fireball screaming across the room at the eyes that still haunted me. The flash of the fire illuminated her briefly, light reflecting off the chain around her wrist, before she vanished. The fireball struck the cabinet behind her instead and it burst into flame, an alarm blaring seconds later. My heart hammered in my chest and I passively noticed that rice clung to my lower legs, vegetables and meat scattered across the floor from where I’d dropped the leftovers. A moment later, sprinklers in the ceiling sprung to life and quickly quelled the flames, soaking me in the process. Of course Asami had a fire control system installed in her house. I stood there staring at the spot where the shadow of me had been.

I heard Asami calling my name after the alarm and sprinklers stopped, and I distractedly called back “Kitchen” without looking away. She entered the room behind me, stopping at the doorway when she noticed the water everywhere. She turned on the light and water dripped off of my fingertips, thumping against the side of the carryout container. The light revealed nothing new about the spot where I’d seen her, no evidence that she’d ever actually been there.

“Korra... Is everything okay?”

I finally let out a sigh and covered my face with my hands, wiping the water out of my eyes a moment later and speaking to the floor. “Yeah, yeah everything’s fine. Well, I mean, the house is fine, nothing happened. I just… I had a bad dream, so I came down here for a snack, but then I saw  _ her. _ That other me. She surprised me, and I was already kind of freaked out, and I guess I firebent at her without thinking. She disappeared though, I’m pretty sure it was just a hallucination again. Sorry about the cabinet.”

She crossed the room and hugged me, soaking the front of her nightdress from my clothing as she stood on soggy rice. She didn’t say anything, and I was glad she didn’t, and I slowly felt my heart rate return to normal as I returned the hug and breathed in the smell of her shampoo again. Then I started laughing and she looked at me like I was crazy.

“We’re a disaster,” I told her jokingly, gesturing to the mess the kitchen had turned into.

She started laughing too at that. “Well, at least we’re a fun disaster. And a good one, saving the world and all.”

“Best disaster ever.”

Once her laughter died off, she finally asked. “Which one was it this time?”

“A new one.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not tonight. It was weird. I want to write down some of the details so I can talk to Tenzin about it tomorrow though, see what he thinks. I know you have to get to the office early, but I’ll tell you about it over lunch, okay?” I knew she wouldn’t try to convince me to if I didn’t want to, but I also knew she’d worry about me if I kept it to myself.

“Okay. Narook’s again?”

“Works for me.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?”

I often had trouble sleeping after a nightmare, though I was getting better about it. I could tell she thought I might not be able to with it being a new one. “I don’t know. I think so, but won’t know til I try, I guess.” She leaned in to give me a kiss and squeezed me in a hug one more time, then turned to look at the colossal mess that still dominated the kitchen, water pooling in the corners under the cabinets.

“I think this is the second happiest I’ve been that my fiancée is a waterbender.” She shot me a look that was both smug and sultry.

“Oh yeah?” I asked as I started bending the water from the counters into the sink as she went to collect the broom from the utility closet. “And what was the happiest?”

“The first time we showered together.” I choked on nothing and my cheeks flushed, and she laughed at me without any malice. “Come on, let’s get this taken care of so we can get back to bed.”

After I finished waterbending the kitchen and the two of us dry and she scooped up all of the rice and other wasted food off of the floor, I finally got around to my post-nightmare midnight snack. She sat with me on the counter next to the fridge, her arm looped through mine and her head on my shoulder while food settled my nerves roughly half as much as she did. Back in her room again --  _ our _ room -- I took a minute to write down what I remembered of the nightmare. Then we went back to bed, panicked flashes from my dream and glowing eyes dancing on the edges of my mind but held off by the feeling of having her warm in my arms again.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my [Tumblr](http://ihavelightinside.tumblr.com), hit me up with asks and stuff if you want to chat outside of the comments. Also, if you're a zootopia fan, I'm going to start writing fanfiction for that fandom as well, and you can find my blog for that at [judyhoppsforlife](http://judyhoppsforlife.tumblr.com). It's new and I'm not on tumblr that much lately, but it'll get up and running like my Korra one eventually.
> 
> Special note for the physical therapist who commented on my "The Only Exception" work: contact me on tumblr! I don't have any way of contacting you but would love your insight! I replied to your comment but it doesn't appear that you ever saw it cause no account! Thank you <3


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